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Coach Wooden urged his players, “Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Character is what you really are. Reputation is what people say you are. Character is more important.” In fact, John Wooden’s leadership was “character-based” before the word was invented.
When it came to competition and comparing with others, Wooden’s dad taught him, “Johnny, don’t worry about being better than somebody else, but never cease trying to be the best you can be. You have control over that. Not the other.” So, he taught others to strive to accomplish the very best that you are capable of. Nothing less than your best effort will suffice. You may fool others, but you can never fool yourself. Self-satisfaction will come from the knowledge that you left no stone unturned in an effort to accomplish everything possible under the circumstances.
Wooden’s father gave him these “Seven Suggestions to Follow”:
- Be true to yourself.
- Help others.
- Make each day your masterpiece.
- Drink deeply from good books—including the Good Book.
- Make friendship a fine art.
- Build a shelter against a rainy day.
- Pray for guidance, count and give thanks for your blessings every day.
On leadership, Wooden points out that a leader must accomplish the difficult task of getting those on the team to believe that “we” supersedes “me”. He likes to say, “It is amazing how much we can accomplish if no one cares who gets the credit.”
Basics—details, fundamentals—are the underpinning of great performance in basketball or business. An organization will not achieve or sustain success when sloppiness in the execution of relevant details is permitted.
Pyramid of Success
Wooden taught his players the “Pyramid of Success.” He started with this admonition, “Don’t judge yourself by what you’ve accomplished, but rather by what you could have accomplished given your ability.”
Industriousness
This was the first block—a cornerstone—for the Pyramid of Success. Wooden called it “Industriousness” because of his assessment that the word “work” had lost real meaning. There is no trick, no easy way. Success travels in the company of very hard work. It is not what you achieve that matters, but what you could have achieved. Industriousness is a key—irreplaceable—factor in becoming the best you can be.
Enthusiasm
As a leader, you must be filled with energy and eagerness, joy and love for what you do. If you lack enthusiasm for your job, you cannot perform to the best of your ability. Industriousness is unattainable without Enthusiasm.
Friendship
Strive to build a team filled with camaraderie and respect: comrades-in-arms. Two key characteristics of Friendship are respect and camaraderie.
Loyalty
Give loyalty and loyalty will be returned in abundance. People do not arrive at your organization’s doorstep with Loyalty. It comes when they perceive that your concern for their interests and welfare goes beyond simply calculating what they can do for you or how you can use them to your advantage.
Cooperation
Have the utmost concern for what’s right rather than who’s right. Much can be accomplished by teamwork when no one is concerned about who gets credit.
Second Tier of Pyramid
Self-Control
If you do your best, never lose your temper, and never be out-fought or out-hustled, you’ll have nothing to worry about. Control of your organization begins with control of yourself. Be disciplined. Self-Control creates consistency. Consistency is crucial to getting to the top and staying there.
Alertness
Constantly be aware and observing. Always seek to improve yourself and the team. You must constantly be awake, alive, and alert in evaluating yourself as well as the strengths and weaknesses of your organization and those of the competition.
Initiative
Failure to act is often the biggest failure of all. Have the courage to make decisions and the willingness to risk failure. As a rule, Coach Wooden never benched or admonished a player who tried in an intelligent way to make something happen on the court—even when they failed. He did not want an environment where individuals were afraid to risk failure. Never rebuke someone who makes a mistake after careful planning and proper preparation.
Intentness
It’s not who starts the game, but who finishes it. Stay the course. When thwarted, try again—harder, smarter. Never be satisfied. Work constantly to improve. Perfection is a goal that can never be reached, but it must be the objective. The uphill climb is slow, but the downhill road is fast. Nothing of consequence occurs without Intentness.
Condition
What you do away from practice can tear down all we accomplished during a practice. Ability may get you to the top, but character keeps you there: mental, moral, and physical. How does one attain moral Condition? John Wooden has prescribed a commonsense method for decades: Practice moderation and balance in all that you do.
Wooden occasionally posted the following reminder on the UCLA team bulletin board: “There is a choice you have to make, in everything you do. So keep in mind that in the end, the choice you make, makes you.” Moderation and balance are significant factors in attaining proper Condition. Physical Condition is impossible without mental and moral Condition.
Skill
When you are through learning, you are through. What a leader learns after having learned it all counts most of all.
Team Spirit
Demonstrate an eagerness to sacrifice personal interests or glory for the welfare of the group.
Top of Pyramid
Poise
Rudyard Kipling defined it this way, “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same…”
Just be yourself. Don’t be rattled by events, whether good or bad. Few characteristics are more valuable to a leader than Poise—especially under pressure.
Confidence
You must earn the right to be confident, the kind of confidence that comes from proper preparation. The strongest steel is well-founded self-belief. It is earned, not given. All supporting tiers of the Pyramid of Success give you the right to be Confident (and have Poise).
Competitive Greatness
A goal beyond victory, a standard above winning. For over half a century, John Wooden has defined Competitive Greatness as follows: Performing at your best when your best is needed; a real love for the hard battle.
Summary of the Pyramid
Friendship, Loyalty, and Cooperation together represent the “working together” blocks in the Pyramid’s foundation. The heart of the Pyramid of Success is Condition (physical, mental, and moral), Skill, and Team Spirit. Near the apex, Coach Wooden placed Poise and Confidence. They come to you with proper preparation: the first three tiers.
12 Lessons in Leadership
(1) Good values attract good people
Treat all people with dignity and respect. Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do.”
Here’s a good definition of character: respect for yourself, respect for others, respect for the rules.
Good values are like a magnet. So are bad values. What you do is who you are. Who you are is what the organization becomes. People actually do “follow the leader.”
(2) Use the Most Powerful 4-Letter Word
The people in your organization are your extended family. “Love” is more important than “like”. Be more concerned with what you can do for others than what others can do for you. You’ll be surprised at the result.
(3) Call Yourself a Teacher
Each member of your team has the potential for personal greatness; a leader’s job is to teach them how to do it. A great leader is a teacher who is a lifelong student.
(4) Emotion is Your Enemy
John Wooden was cool when it counted; his confidence and strength and attitude became the team’s confidence, strength, and attitude. Emotionalism—temperamental flareups and drop-offs—makes consistent high performance impossible. Intensity makes you stronger. Emotionalism makes you weaker.
(5) It takes 10 hands to score a basket
The star of your team is the team. Both you and your organization must fully comprehend that fact.
(6) Little things make big things happen
Coach Wooden taught that great things can only be accomplished by doing the little things right. Doing things right became a habit with us. Habits stand up under pressure.
Wooden said, “I love to see little things done correctly. In my experience, that may be as close to anything that I can identify as being ‘the secret of success’: little things done right.” There are no big things; only an accumulation of little things that must be done well.
(7) Make each day your masterpiece
If you do not have the time to do it right, when will you find the time to do it over? Treat time carelessly and it will do the same to you and your organization. Personal punctuality is a good way to teach respect for time.
(8) The carrot is mightier than a stick
Over the years, Wooden changed from having lots of rules and few suggestions to lots of suggestions and fewer rules. He came to believe as a coach and leader that if he conducted himself in a manner that earned the respect of those under his leadership, the same feeling would exist in them. When it did, he would gain one of the most powerful leadership tools available to a leader—namely, trust.
The most effective carrot is often a respected leader’s praise. It creates pride.
(9) Make greatness available to everyone
“You can always do more than you think you can.” That’s the biggest thing many of his players got from Coach Wooden’s teaching. Each member of your team has the potential for personal greatness; the leader’s job is to help them achieve it.
Coach Wooden stated the following very clearly, “In whatever role I assign you, execute your responsibilities to the very best of your ability.”
(10) Seek Significant Change
Never be content with performance or results.
(11) Don’t Look at the Scoreboard
Worry about today’s effort, not tomorrow’s results. Coach Wooden’s basic philosophy was to prepare for each opponent in the same way; respect all, fear none, and concentrate on teaching the Bruins to execute his system at their highest level. Teaching, learning, and execution are all done in the present moment.
Coach Wooden never scouted other teams because he believed the Bruins were better off letting the opponent do the scouting and constant changing. He felt the players under his supervision would be stronger doing the same thing over and over—his system executed at the highest possible standard—than trying to change each week depending on who the opponent might be.
(12) Adversity is your asset
Welcome adversity. It can make you stronger, better, tougher. Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out. Be a realistic optimist and remind yourself that things turn out best for those who make the best of how things turn out.
Other Reflections on Leadership (More Wooden Maxims & Observations)
- Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to stay there.
- When you’re through learning, you’re through.
- If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not doing anything.
- It’s important to keep trying to do what you think is right, no matter how hard it is or how often you fail. You never stop trying
- Do not let what you can’t do interfere with what you can do.
- Failure to act is often the biggest failure of all. “Tentative” is a word I do not associate with Competitive Greatness.
- Little things make big things happen. Success is built from the ground up.
- The best way to improve the team is to improve yourself.
- You are not a failure until you start blaming others for your mistakes.
- The force of character is cumulative. Those words by Ralph Waldo Emerson can be put this way: “Birds of a feather flock together.” A leader with character attracts people with character.
- The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.
- Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. Care, concern, and a sincere consideration for those in your organization is the mark of a strong leader.
- Don’t mistake activity for achievement.
- Discipline yourself and others won’t need to.
- “Love” is the greatest word in the English language. “Balance” is the second-greatest word.
- Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. My definition of success states that you must make the utmost effort to bring forth your talent.
- If you have done your job in preparing the team, the team is prepared to do its job in playing the game. So let them.
- Be quick, but don’t hurry. Expect hustle from those under your supervision, but caution them not to expedite at a pace that increases the chance of errors.
- No written word nor spoken plea can teach your team what it should be. The most effective teaching tool is the power of your example—for better or worse.
- Perfection of relevant details is silly to some, but it’s not funny to me.
- The infection of success is often fatal. Most people work harder on the way to the top than when they arrive.
- More often than we ever suspect, the lives of others we do affect.
- Define “normal” as “abnormally high.”
- Play to win, but play fair.
- The will to win means nothing without the will to work. I told those under my supervision, “Don’t tell me what you will do. Show me.”
- You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time.
- Learn as if you were to live forever; live as if you were to die tomorrow.
- Happiness begins where selfishness ends. Selflessness is the start of a happy team.
- Fear is short-term; pride lasts.
- There is no such thing as an overachiever.
- Do not be vulnerable to praise or criticism from outsiders. Your strength of consistency depends on how you let praise and criticism affect you.
- If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?
- I will get ready, and then, perhaps, my chance will come.
- You must prepare before opportunity knocks. It seldom knocks twice.
- Be more interested in finding the best way, not in having it your way.
- Make sure those under your supervision feel they are working with you, not for you. “All for one and one for all” also applies to the leader.
- Goals achieved with little effort are seldom worthwhile or long-lasting.
- Time spent getting even is best spent getting ahead.
- There is nothing stronger than gentleness.
- The most powerful motivator is a compliment from someone you respect
- Be slow to criticize. Be quick to commend.
- Much more can be accomplished when no one is concerned about who gets credit.
- Agree to disagree without being disagreeable
- You must earn the right to be proud and confident
- Give credit to those who do little jobs in a big way.
- You can’t make up for poor effort today by working harder tomorrow.
- Heed this observation: “Others, too, have brains.”
- Don’t measure yourself by what you’ve accomplished, but by what you should have accomplished with your abilities.
- Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.
- The smallest good deed is better than the biggest intention.
- A leader must have courage, including the courage to change.
- Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out. The ancient proverb says, “Crisis presents opportunity.”
- You will make no progress without self-awareness
- Keep listening. Keep learning. Keep teaching.
Perhaps what set Coach Wooden apart from 99 percent of the other coaches is that he never thought he knew everything. He was always supportive, even when he was correcting something wrong. Most of all, he taught unity and oneness of purpose in his team members were doing, namely, working to be the very best they could be—to perform their best on the court.
Coach Wooden taught that great things can only be accomplished by doing the little things right. Doing things right became a habit.
One player commented, “He knew us as people. You could tell he cared. And you could tell that he really knew how to teach—just like a professor. And, in a certain kind of way he was a professor. What he taught was how to win. And he did it without ever once mentioning winning.” Another said, “Coach treated each one of us the way we needed to be treated, the way that worked best for each person. Coach believed or understood that no two of us were alike. His understanding of people and how to work with each player individually was evident in practice every day.”
May these lessons from John Wooden’s own words and the words of those whose lives he touched serve you well, as you shoot for the stars!